A Thousand Years
by Finnigan Geist
Summary: Ishida waits for Orihime.


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_"I miss your grandmother every day," Souken said. "I remember when I met her, I felt as though my whole life had been leading up to that moment. She's gone now, but not forever. All I have to do is wait to be with her again." _

**Zero**

Ishida was eleven when he first saw Inoue. There wasn't anything particular about her that stood out, but she caught his eye. _Her hair would clash with a lot of colors_, he thought, and went back to his reading, planning to pay no more attention to her than he did the rest of the people at his school.

Without fully realizing that he was doing it, he noticed her when she moved, when she spoke, when she laughed. He began anticipating the next time he would see her, and she was the first of his classmates he associated with a name, a face, and a feeling.

**Two**

It was raining, and Inoue had just finished her sewing project. "Oh, no!" she cried, looking out the window at the downpour. "We can't walk home in this. I'm sorry you had to wait for me to lock up the classroom." He shook his head a little to indicate it wasn't a big deal, but he didn't think she saw it. Her focus wasn't really on him.

She chatted about possibly having to camp out at the school if the weather didn't get better and what materials from the Handicrafts room they could use to build a tent, while he watched her. When he took the time to concentrate on it, her spirit power always surprised him. It felt unique, bright, bubbling, not at all like the darker, steadier flow of a shinigami. It was soothing to let it pass over him, easy to allow it to drown out the ugly noise of thunder and the hum of florescent lights.

Her eyes were also unusual, somehow, and he tried to think of a color in his selection of fabric to match them. She turned and smiled at him and his train of thought hiccupped. He felt a weird urge to tell her about himself, something he'd never done with anyone before, to brag about his developing skill. Somehow he knew she wouldn't laugh at him, wouldn't question the existence of Hollows and the great Quincies who vanquished them.

She shifted back to the window and he crushed the impulse. Instead, he pulled out a piece of embroidery he was working on, threaded a needle efficiently, and listened to the rhythm of her voice as they waited for the rain to stop.

**Four**

Soul Society was active, but it was oddly quiet all around him. Aizen was gone, Rukia saved, and the constant feeling that he was in the middle of the war had vanished, but he was restless. All his nerves thrummed ceaselessly under his still flesh, and his mind couldn't settle.

He couldn't find Inoue-san. After spending several tense days with her, it felt natural to be in her presence, calming. He didn't have to think about what he'd sacrificed and how the man who murdered and desecrated his clan was still alive. The tips of his fingers tingled with the absence of his spirit power and he gritted his teeth. Everywhere he turned, there was some other shinigami who would _look_ at him or try to talk to him, and he couldn't dismiss them quickly enough.

After he'd finished making clothes, there was really nothing to do anymore, nothing to distract him. Kuchiki-san and Kurosaki weren't anywhere around, either, and Sado-kun wasn't much of a help occupying his attention. Ishida paused for a moment as he considered that he'd lost track of Kurosaki and Inoue-san at about the same time. His skin prickled and he made a sharp change in direction when he saw another strange shinigami approaching.

He went back to his room and tried to keep his thoughts quiet until everyone returned.

**Nine**

He wrote long, clinically precise essays and performed perfectly on tests. His professors called him _genius_ and he smiled thinly.

Moving on after the battle with Aizen had seemed impossible at the time. The world had changed, the afterlife had changed, his soul had changed. The capability of humans to adapt to anything was incredible, he found, as life settled quickly back into its usual pace, and those who battled for the fate of the world months ago spoke of entrance exams and going to university. The group of people he had never expected to need and never thought he would be parted from grew up, moved away, just like he did. He enrolled in classes and hid his powers and felt like he was twelve again.

Mostly, he kept to himself, but sometimes there were girls. To his great surprise, they came to him every now and then, throwing his world off balance. Why would a girl want to talk to him? Nobody talked to him. He said as much to the first one who asked him out and, before he could even think about it, flatly denied her. The others he generally refused on the basis of having too much work to do, which wasn't really a lie. It was much kinder than telling the whole truth, which was that he couldn't muster up enough interest to waste his time with them when he could be doing something better.

One girl, though, was different. Her smile was warm and her eyes were gentle and there was something like familiarity in the spaces between his flesh and her fingertips. They moved softly together and he might have been happy, but she wasn't quite right and he was completely wrong. Nothing stirred in him when she told him "I'm sorry."

He returned to filling his time with studies and the gaps in his heart with dreams of brighter eyes.

**Twenty**

One day, Ishida died. The passing wasn't what he'd expected it to be, though he'd stopped imagining his death in a blaze of Quincy glory while saving the world years ago.

He hadn't been back to Soul Society in fourteen years, and the space between his memory of it and reality was jarring. No one thing was very different, but a hundred little unidentifiable details. It was as though someone had moved every brick in his home slightly off center. _Well_, he mused, _I have time to get accustomed_. He had time, and patience was something he'd acquired during his life. Another thought, _They'll all come back here eventually_, passed through his mind, and it was oddly comforting.

Ishida walked down the streets, alone and surrounded by souls, and smiled wistfully as a cabbage butterfly flitted across his view.

**---**

_"How can I know?" Uryuu asked._

_"You won't have to know," Souken replied. "She'll stay with you forever once you find her, and you will gladly wait a thousand years for her to find you in return."_

end


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